Prasenjit Biswas

Prasenjit Biswas is an Indian professor of philosophy at North Eastern Hill University, Shillong. His research interests reflect an interdisciplinary orientation that includes ethno-philosophy, ethnicity, and indigenous identities. He is a human rights defender who works with Barak Human Right Protection Committee ( BHRPC), Silchar. The BHRPC defended human rights of labourers and their families in tea gardens of Barak Valley of Assam, who faced deaths due to starvation in 2011–12.

Rooted in a Sanskritic tradition of doing Darsana in a family of traditional Indian philosophers, he develops a dialogic interface between heterodox Indian philosophical traditions and European and Continental philosophical world-views. His current works are a return to an interdisciplinary worldview traditions in which he combines a policy paradigm such as India's Act East with Southeast and East Asian traditions from a contemporary Indian philosophical point of view of 'Swaraj in Ideas' and Rabindranath Tagore's Cosmopolitan universalism. In the recently held World Congress of Philosophy, He conducted a round table on "Indigenous Philosophy". The round table discussed possibilities of transcultural understanding of universality of unrepresented archipelegean, mountainous and spiritually rich traditions of en-worlded philosophies from aboriginal groups and communities. He has successfully guided about 12 doctoral theses as part of his professional research career. His areas of supervision includes Cognitive turn in Philosophy of Mind, Consciousness Studies, Artificial Intelligence and Philosophy of Science.

He writes occasionally in The Statesman on issues related to Northeast India and often shares his views in national and international media on a variety of socio-political issues. Recently he covered a whole lot of critical political issues in Indian media as an independent political commentator:https://muckrack.com/prasenjit-biswas/articles

Academic career

Biswas obtained his PhD from North Eastern Hill University. He was formerly with Indian School of Mines, Dhanbad, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, and Assam University, Silchar.Presently he hold full professorship at North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong, India since 2011.

Books authored

• Political economy of underdevelopment of North-East India, Akansha Pub. House, 2004 (with Rifual Ahmed).
• The Postmodern Controversy: Understanding Richard Rorty, Jacques Derrida and Jurgen Habermas, Rawat Publications, 2005.
• Ethnic life-worlds in north-east India: an analysis, New Delhi: Sage, 2008 (with Chandan Suklabaidya).

Construction of Evil in north east India, Sage ( edited with C J Thomas)

Between Philosophy and Anthropology: Aporias of Language, Thought and Consciousness, Notion Press, Chennai, 2017.

Books edited

• Peace in India's North-East: Meaning, Metaphor, and Method: Essays of Concern and Commitment, New Delhi: Regency, 2006 (with C. Joshua Thomas) ISBN 8189233483
• Construction of Evil in North East India: Myth, Narrative and Discourse New Delhi: Sage, 2012 (with C. Joshua Thomas). ISBN 9788132109457

Recent articles

• "Theorizing contemporary vernacular politics in North-East India" In D.V.Kumar (ed.) " Revisiting Social Theory: Challenges and Possibilities", Routledge, London and New York,2024, pp.167-83.
• " Aporias of Indian Thought: In-Figuring Ethno-Tribal Philosophy from India's North-East" In Anirban Mukherjee and Ngaleknao Ramthing ( eds.), "Re-interpreting Tradition: critical essays on 20 th century Indian Thought"(North Bengal University Studies in Philosophy 23), Northern Book Centre, New Delhi,2023, pp.46-71.
• "Phenomenology and Ontology of Humiliation" in Man and Society: A Journal of North-East Studies, Vol.X, Summer, 2013, pp. 180–202.
• "Daya Krishna's 'Presuppositionsless Philosophy': Sublimity as a Source of Value and Knowledge" In Shail Mayaram (ed.) Philosophy as Samvad and swaraj, SAGE, New Delhi, forthcoming, pp. 133–54.
• "The Sense of self: Ka Rngiew, Tlawmngaihna and the Art of Not Being Governed" in Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research, Oct-Dec 2011, vol.X XVIII, no. 4, pp. 129–167.
• "The Inscrutable substance of Ontology" in Sociological Bulletin, 62(1), January–April, 2013, pp. 124–29.
• "Tagore's Nationalism: In Search of a Proper Place of Identity Struggles of India's Northeast" in Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research, January–March 2011, vol. XXVIII, no. 1, pp. 115–134.